Four car pile-up on Adelaide Avenue

There was an accident on Adelaide Avenue this morning, just opposite the Lodge. It can’t have been too serious, as the cars weren’t overly damaged, but cops and ambos were in attendance.

However, what was particularly striking was the sight of four cars wedged together in a row – I’ve lived in Canberra (on and off) for over 30 years, and never seen anything like it.

Scenario is easy enough to guess – Car 1 brakes, and Cars 2, 3 and 4 are either too close or too distracted (or both) to stop in time. It happens often enough with two cars – but four cars is quite impressive. Anyone know if this is a first for Canberra?

My second such viewing in a week! I passed the one this morning before any emergency vehicles arrived.

Witnessed a similar one about 7pm on Tuesday night, on the Parkway just past the Cotter Road (heading towards Belconnen). 4 cars concertina style, the second one squished in quite badly, had the fire brigade in attendance. I was thinking that one was as a result of people not knowing how to merge into traffic doing 100kmh.

My mother always wonders at how such accidents can happen ‘they’re all heading in the same direction’.

A few years back I was number 5 car in an 8 car pile up on Kings Ave bridge. The car behind me was swerving in and out of traffic and was doing 100km/h and I took the full impact, both my front car seats broke instantly, back windscreen went straight through me, etc, my car was a pancake and to top it off car number 8 was stolen and the driver did a runner after impact. Classy! Lol.

Saw something similar at the form one lane near the Hopeton cct exit a few months back. Four cars nose to tail… very next day, the same thing but with three cars involved a bit closer to the lodge.

I must draw attention to your incorrect use of the word “accident” though (no offence intended). Have you never seen Hot Fuzz?

A pile up can only result when several people are driving poorly in the same vicinity at the same time.

“Accident” implies that nobody is to blame. I would argue that the drivers of car 2, 3 and 4 are all to blame. It is almost certain that all of them were travelling too fast, too close, and not paying proper attention to what was going on ahead of them.

Possibly the driver of car 1 as well, unless they had scanned what was going on ahead of them and come to a gradual, controlled and panic free stop.

A pile up can almost never be classified as an accident.. it is a series of motor vehicle collisions.

I hope everyone involved was OK and not injured. I also hope that every person involved walks away from this thinking “what could I have done differently to avoid winding up in that situation”… rather than the inevitable “it’s not my fault, everyone just stopped out of nowhere.”

Im sure I remember a multi-car pileup on the parkway above Hindmarsh Dr, maybe 15 years ago, which involved over a dozen cars. From memory one of the fatals from that accident was a pedestrian who was standing on the road getting happy-snaps on his camera, who got hit by a car.

Car 7: Catholic driver, busy with the rosary beads praying not to crash.

Don’t joke, I saw some sort of priest driving south on Yamba the other week, prayer book/bible in one hand, signing the cross (or whatever they do) with the other. This continued on and off from near the mint oval to where he turned off at Wisdom.

Pretty sure the pile-up I was involved in on the Tuggeranong Parkway in 2008 had over 7 cars. Managed to close 3 lanes of the parkway too! Only one lane northbound stayed open. Getting up close and personal with the concrete barrier isn’t something I would recommend! Gotta love wet weather, peak hour traffic and dumb a$$ drivers in the ‘Berra…

Car 7: Catholic driver, busy with the rosary beads praying not to crash.

Don’t joke, I saw some sort of priest driving south on Yamba the other week, prayer book/bible in one hand, signing the cross (or whatever they do) with the other. This continued on and off from near the mint oval to where he turned off at Wisdom.

You’d be asking forgiveness too if you had the alter boy steer with the back of his head.

Its likely 3 retard drivers that were tailgating, expecting everyone just to wander out of their way, thinking that no the car in front will never stop suddently.
I must point out that it could just be 1 persons fault if you had a real idiot tailgaters driving in car 4 position they might hit car 3 as its trying to break. The way the retards drive in canberra you could expect that car 3 has no chance when another car a metre behind takes it into car 2 and this 3 car mess smashes into car one that had to stop because someone changed lanes infront of them.

On a deeper level you could also blame the government for installing speed camera and thus have less cops on the road sorting out the dangerious drivers that cause most of the accidents. Speed alone along a straight stretch of road can not cause accidents idiots doing the speed limit weaving in and out of traffic will always contribute more.

Standard Canberra story, car 1 brakes heavily (probably not paying proper attention), subsequent cars following too close (probably not paying attention either), next 3/4 cars plough into into the car in front of them. Other story, you leave safe room, every other car sees it as their spot so applies indicator (sometimes) and immediately pull into other lane making other car brake to let them in, or accident occurs. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t..

Calling it a “pile-up” might just be a little bit of an exaggeration, “four car nose-to-tail” is probably more accurate. Perhaps it’s just me, but when I hear pile-up I imagine cars on top of eachother and strewn about.

Regardless of what it was called, it was a beautiful monument to tailgating.

I noticed a bit of creative navigation in the queue of traffic leading up to the accident. Just before the Cotter Road underpass, a few cars were turning left off Adelaide Ave onto the grass and up towards Cotter Road. Anyone know what the story with that is?

One I see all the time is heading West on Hindmarsh Drive around 5pm the traffic banks up from Tugg parkway back toward Lyons. There’s regularly ‘surprised’ drivers running up the back of other cars.

While tailgating is never ok, it’s quite amusing that the cars with probably the worst stopping distances seem to follow the closest. If you’ve got a crappy old Pulsar with balding cheapo tyres, worn brakes and suspension and the car was average even when new, then it might be an idea to leave a little more room perhaps.

Pedestrians can’t even walk in a straight line on the footpath, they barge straight out of shop doors into passers-by, they walk four abreast blocking the footpath – people not only drive like that, they walk like that too. You’re doing the world a favour by running them over – see [http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/take-a-break-from-lady-gaga-and-stay-tuned-to-the-traffic-instead-20120511-1yi42.html]

Canberra needs to be either half the size (so such self-absorption doesn’t matter) or twice as big (so, like training a dog, the penalty for inattention is instantly punished)